Weekend (18 page)

“You deserve that.”

“I do deserve that, that's the thing. I was not respected in my last relationship.”

Logan said, “I didn't want the same kind of relationships I'd been having; I'd decided just to pack it in. No more dating. And then you showed up and my whole world tilted. I want to be with you, McIntyre.”

“I want to be with you, too.”

Logan leaned forward and took Ajax's hands. “I want to marry you. Tomorrow—today if we get back soon enough. I don't want to wait. I know I want to be with you. I know I don't want you flying west again without being my wife.”

“Logan—” Ajax stared at her fiancé, flummoxed. “I haven't even got a ring, not to put too fine a point on what a jerk you were. Plus, our families.”

“We don't have to tell them. We can do it over again when they can be with us. This can just be for us, Ajax.”

“It's a public document. And anyway, how the hell do you think my kids would feel if they found out I got secretly married to someone they hadn't even met? If I were them, I'd be plenty hurt.”

“I want you right now.”

Ajax looked out the window. Conifers reached green arms. In the meadow, the corn poppies tossed red heads, the sun velcroing itself to the tiny hairs along their stems and buds. A field of carmine tissues dropped by the sad and hurt.

Logan kept touching Ajax's face. “I love you to bits.”

“I'll be here for a long time to come,” said Ajax softly.

“I'm hot for you, baby,” said Logan.

Ajax nodded.

She knew that Logan regarded vulnerability as female, but still they stepped out of their shorts, their cock, and stood before Ajax. “I love you,” Logan growled, and pushed Ajax down onto the bed. “Oh god, I love you.”

She moved Ajax's hand to their wet.

Ajax was all clumsy touch—unsure of the territory. Unsure of Logan's comfort level.

“Yes,” Logan said. “Yes.” And pressed Ajax toward them. Gripped her shoulders.

Ajax swept her fingers across Logan's clit—brought moisture forward. Logan took her wrist and pressed her inside. Ajax felt the corrugated walls of her lover's vagina, stroked their “G” spot, fucked them hard when Logan wanted that. Fucked them up to her hospital bracelet. Logan slung their legs over Ajax's shoulders and jigged their own clit until they burst.

“Jesus Jesus Jesus,” Logan said. “I am not supposed to like that.”

Ajax scooted up the bed and rested her head on Logan's shoulder. “Good?”

“So good,” said Logan, voice guttural. Logan made a noise—surrender. Their legs were frog-open and forgotten. “Fuck, fuck, Ajax. I forgot it could feel that good. You are a shining star.”

“You always touch your clit when I fuck your ass,” Ajax said sleepily.

Logan shook their head. “I—I'm on my belly; I didn't even realize you knew that. It's just what I can do to finish when the visuals aren't on.”

“Look, baby, we don't ever have to do it again.”

“I loved it,” said Logan turning to look at her, their eyes wide and vulnerable. “But I don't know how you can do it all the time.”

Ajax rolled off Logan's shoulder. “I just open to you, is all. I want you as deep in me as you can go. Because I love you. Because I trust you.”

Logan drummed their fingers. “I'm most nude when I'm strapped. That's just how it is for me. But, like, I liked what you did enough that it's gonna fuck me up.”

“How fuck you up?”

“When I get into the shower with you without a cock? I'm gonna think I'm a girl again,” said Logan. They stuck their arm in the air, had Ajax feel up their biceps. “Thinking I'm a girl fucks me completely up.”

“You're not a girl,” said Ajax firmly. “You're a boy.”

“I'm a
boy,
” said Logan.

“Think of cunt for you as inverted cock,” said Ajax. “Think
of it as having your cock fucked inside out. Me fucking the inside of your cock.”

Logan laughed. “Yeah, yeah.” They sat up, pulled on gear and gaunch. “I survived it anyhow. Intact, or at least happy.” They undid Ajax's T-shirt, ran a soft finger down between her breasts. “You.”

“I guess I'm a pragmatist. I'm a fan of capitalizing on what I have,” said Ajax.

“Yeah, I've noticed. I love your skin. It's the colour of toasted nuts.”

“It shows every scar.”

“Scars should always show. Scars are honour badges.” Logan lifted their arm, showing a slash they'd got years ago after falling off a horse. They reached over. “I'm putting my finger here, Ajax, and all I can think about is whether your heart underneath is working okay, not that your nipples are inches away.”

“It's never working okay. But it's a trooper,” said Ajax.

Logan flattened their hand.

Ajax put her hand on Logan's crotch. “I put my hand here, and all I can think about is that it's you—whatever
you
means. I don't think ‘girl.' I don't think ‘boy.' I don't think, is this person going to transition?”

“What if I did?”

“I would help you in any way that was possible for me. I hope you know that. You can just feel free to be you, okay? And I will do my best to stay me?”

“Stay you and alive,” said Logan.

“Okay,” said Ajax. “And we can have whatever kind of sex makes sense to both of us. We can change it up, or we can keep on doing the same old fabulous stuff we discovered at first.”

“I'm all for variety, in theory,” said Logan.

They smiled at each other.

“I'm especially for getting my ring back.”

Logan swatted her. “I was a jerk. I'll get you another one.”

“I don't want another one. I want that exact one. The one you gave me when you proposed.”

       
JOE

Joe was up all night railing and howling to everyone she could conjure—family, Linda, Toronto friends—and distractedly caring for Scout. Scout must have sensed the dis-ease, because she cried disconsolately, forcing Joe off the telephone.

Late into the night, Joe woke—was it waking? Had she nodded off?—to the sound of a boat engine. She went to the window, saw red lights growing more distant in the fog above the lake. If it was Elliot having second thoughts, realizing the devastation of her actions, she'd changed her mind about coming in.

Joe discovered a phone message from Logan saying they'd had to go off-island and asking her to watch Toby. Toby, the drooling giant. The small horse of a dog.

Now that she concentrated, she could hear Toby howling. She padded across the dewy grass to rescue him, brought him to her place with some chow, and, after feeding him, spilled out a knuckle bone for him to gnaw on and scrape. His enthusiastic tail could have taken out a six-year-old.

The early dawn was clear, with heat lightning. Joe imagined Ell standing arm in arm with whatever woman she was with, looking up at this same fulgurating sky, seeing different things than Joe was seeing—shooting stars, maybe, promise and beginnings in each flash. Maybe they weren't even up now; maybe they were tucked in bed together, post-coitally spooning.

Joe, though? Joe made it all the way through to Monday without sleep. And Elliot stayed gone, with all her cruelty left
behind to boomerang around the cottage.
I'm not in love with you. I should have left you years ago.
Maybe it was sinking in, but it still didn't have as much power as the older things between them: Meeting and falling in love. Laughter. Connection. Dancing. Gardening. Fucking. The fertility lab. Scout!

How do you take what you built together and aim a wrecking ball at it? How do you cause someone that much pain and call yourself reasonable? And why not turn it around and make it right?

Somehow Joe paced her way to Monday afternoon telling herself to
just stop, just stop, just stop
. She looked at her wrists with longing, her baby with detachment, her rafters assessingly. Struggling from bed yet again, she remembered that Elliot, the cad, had done pretty much this exact same thing to Logan.

The heel.

The turd.

Using poly to link up hard with a new girl, breaking poly's boundaries. Long ago, Joe herself said,
Elliot, go home and clean up your mess. If you want to be with me—if you want to get serious with me—then go fix things at home however you have to do that. Resolve things.

I can't,
Elliot had said.
I can't hurt them like that.

It's not respectful not to tell them the truth.

I don't want to hurt them, but I just don't have the juice for Logan anymore.

You're hurting them now, Elliot. Pretending they're causing this disruption, when it's you? Telling them you're somewhere
else when you're with me? Do the honourable thing. Tell Logan. Leave them if you need to. But you can't stay where you are, living with them and loving me. Logan's been making life choices based on believing you. Leave them or consign me to oblivion—your choice. And if this ever happens to us at some future point, please, let me be the first, not the last, to know. Promise?

Elliot had crossed her heart.

Ha! How could Joe have forgotten that? Elliot was entirely self-absorbed, without compassion or insight during that breakup. She'd thought the rules of good behaviour didn't apply to her. In the end, she'd dropped Logan like Logan had never existed, and for years after that, even well into the time Logan was building on the island, she'd kept their feud going, stubbornly insisting that everything that was actually her fault was Logan's.

What a primo assaholic—and Joe had been put on notice then, hadn't she? She had to know identical behaviour might be coming her way.

If Ell could walk in right now and wind time back so that the things she'd said vaporized, would Joe welcome her?

Other than to let Toby out, Joe stayed locked up, not eating, barely keeping water down, nodding off with Scout at her breast, and bolting awake in a dream state where she'd forgotten the crisis and believed, for a split second, everything was fine. Everything
had
to be just fine, because she couldn't handle being a single mom; she couldn't manage
that
—she'd never wanted to have a kid alone. She felt a buzz of protectiveness for Scout, and
as she fed her, promised that she'd keep her safe and happy; she didn't have to go and live with her other mommy, she didn't.

She kept trying to get it to make sense:
Ell left me. Ell left me, Ell left me, Ell left me.

I promise I will keep you safe, Scout. I promise I will be your mommy no matter what happens with Elliot.

She finally slept out of sheer exhaustion, though she kept startling awake.

Joe was more dishevelled with each passing hour, but she picked her slow way down the path and across the flagstones and knocked politely at Logan's door. Logan came up behind her from the dock, mud on their knees, twigs in their hair. Toby thrashed his weapon of a tail, excited to be home.

Joe thrust Scout into their arms.

Logan said, “Joe, whoa. Not a good ti—” but Joe had barrelled inside. Logan followed her in, brushing off their knees.

Ajax, fuzzy-slippered feet up, lifted a wan hand in greeting. “You look like hell, Joe. Come over here and tell me.”

“You can't be here right now, Joe,” said Logan firmly. “We're on our way back to Toronto.” They exchanged a warning look with Ajax.

“Elliot left me!” Joe said, windmilling her arms.

Logan said, “What are you talking about?” They held the baby out like Scout's diapers were stinky.

Joe grabbed the baby back.

Ajax struggled to get up. “No! Oh no!”

“Don't you even think about getting up, Ajax,” Logan remonstrated.

“Why can't Ajax get up?” Joe looked around. “How did the proposal go?”

Ajax sank back down. “We're engaged!” She lifted her left hand, ringless. “Theoretically, there's a ring.”

Logan sank to their knees in front of the couch, dug in their pockets, and pushed a silver band onto Ajax's finger.

“You're filthy, Logan,” said Ajax, beaming, giving them a kiss. “Tell us about Elliot, Joe. What the
fuck
?”

“Congratulations!” Joe bent to kiss Ajax's forehead, lowered the baby into Ajax's reaching arms. “Congrats! How wonderful! Congrats, you old dog,” said Joe to Logan, shoulder-punching them. “I'm thrilled for you.”

“We're pretty happy about it,” said Ajax.

Logan scowled. “You mean Elliot's off somewhere? She left you here alone?”

Joe said, “No, I mean she walked out on me. On us. I don't know when. Yesterday?”

“I know we're talking Elliot here, but she wouldn't do that.”

Joe shrugged. “Hours before, we were fucking.”
I screwed her brains out,
thought Joe.

“That's what she did to me, too,” said Logan. “She fucked me when she was about to tell me she was dumping me. There's someone else, right?”

“She alluded to it. Vaguely. Possibly.” Scout began to root
on Joe's shirt. “If I stop to think about it, she's been very distant. She barely seems to care about Scout.”

Logan said, “If Elliot hadn't dumped me, I wouldn't have found Ajax.”

“You're coming back to Toronto with us,” said Ajax. “We're not leaving you up here by yourself, Joe, no way.”

Joe looked at them and realized something was very off. “What's going on, you guys? I mean, besides the fact that you're getting hitched?”

They gave her the medical update.

Joe fed Scout with tears streaming down her face.
And she thought
she
had problems.

       
AJAX

As they bucked across the lake toward Logan's car, Joe leaned back against Ajax's knees with the bundled baby, white as the froth on the wake, belongings piled high around her; Ajax and Logan were taking her back to her city house in the Beaches—where, with luck, Elliot hadn't set up shop.

Everything was freaking Ajax out (quietly, quietly, so Logan couldn't tell): Elliot's duplicitousness and abandonment, her own engagement, Logan and whether Logan would be, long-term, dependable. Thoughts sped through her mind triple-time.
Face facts
, she said to herself. She was a genderqueer woman engaged to a maybe-transitioning guy. Logan's cunt was a relic from an accident of split cells; in lowering their cunt onto Ajax's mouth, in calling for Ajax to fuck them deeper and harder, had Logan felt surreal? The answers could wait; for now, Ajax was happy they could touch each other's sore, bruised parts and claim it as love.

The Mustang's top was up to protect Scout; Joe half wept, half slept slumped beside her car seat. On the other side of Scout, Toby hulked, his head mostly dangling out the window. Ajax craned around frequently to see if they were okay.
Define okay
, Joe thought,
with a massive dog goobering on your baby's head
. Ajax watched the scenery slide past.
Stop whining and get on with it. You've been sick before. There's plenty to be happy about. You're getting married! To a person you adore!
And you have less chance of a stroke! More chance of a bleed, but less of a stroke.

Dropping Joe off at her house was hard, but she wouldn't agree to come stay with them. “We'll call you,” Ajax called, blowing a kiss. “I'll be thinking of you every second.”

Logan was obviously itching to get Ajax inside. From the parkade, Logan steered her firmly toward the apartment and bed, tucked her in, and took Toby for another walk. “He needs some roughhousing,” they said. Ajax drifted off into a dream of jogging; Logan was keyboarding beside her when she woke the next morning.

“You don't by chance have your divorce certificate with you, do you, sleepyhead?” said Logan. “We need it for our licence.”

Ajax, still dreamy and warm, rolled into her lover's arms; Logan put the computer aside. Logan hugged her, kissed the end of her nose. Ajax said sleepily, “Where's the fire?” Meaning,
I didn't die. Would we be doing this right now if I wasn't sick?

Logan popped out of bed to feed the dog; the aroma of canned dog food and kibble wafted in. Logan jumped back in bed and said, “You don't want to get married anymore?”

“I get that we shouldn't wait to have a ceremony in the Bahamas, but I still want my kids there, a bit of a proper occasion. And I think Joe and Scout have to be there, if not Elliot. Symbolically, new life, right? Plus Joe needs company right now. Joe is going to really need the heck out of us.” Ajax threw back the covers and they gasped. While she was sleeping, she
had bloomed with blue roses. Bruises, dozens if not hundreds, regrettably easy to distinguish against her still-grey skin.

“Ajax, sweetheart, what the hell?”

“Oh, fuck goddamnit. Pass me tissues.” Ajax rolled from bed, bleeding from her nose. Even with a wad of tissues, blood dripped around Ajax's fingers. “More, more! Fuck!” She tried to catch the overflow with her legs, but she bled on the bed, the carpet. She daubed ineffectually at her legs. She watched Logan's face grow horrified. She ran to the bathroom, saw what looked like slaughter in the mirror—blood tears, blood everywhere—threw back the shower curtain, dropped herself into the tub, and sat there stunned and freezing, shivering with goosebumps. She pulled down a towel and wrapped herself in it. She'd read the stats on hemorrhaging from blood thinners; big chance, especially in the first month. Twenty percent of people who landed in the hospital died within a week. And there was gangrene, necrosis, amputations, strokes—not one of those a word she wanted to utter around Logan, but every one of them a word which Logan might soon hear. The good news was that her stomach didn't hurt and she wasn't vomiting; there were no signs of internal bleeding, so far.
Touch wood
. This was just what they called “nuisance” bleeding.

Logan called 9-1-1.

“I knew I'd hemorrhage. I
knew
it,” said Ajax, tilting her head back. “Why didn't I listen to myself?”

Logan draped a blanket over her. “I would have made exactly the same decisions.”

“But I knew better. My instincts are usually good. I can't fucking be on these drugs.”

Logan tried to mop up Ajax's face, but the blood continued to pour from her nose and tear ducts.

“I'm so cold, Logan,” Ajax said, shutting her eyes.

“Help is on its way, sweetheart.”

“My left arm is tingly,” said Ajax, opening and closing her hand, wiggling the fingers. She looked at her fiancé. “I knew I should walk away from you. I didn't think it was going to get bad like this, not for years; I thought I was basically okay, or I could work on getting better, anyway. I did all the right things to get better, honey, so we could have a life together.”

“This sucks, but you don't suck. Your left ventricle doesn't work, is all. When I met you, you felt like total shit, and you kept on trucking anyway. I'd have you out walking, you'd be limping, and you'd be trying to distract me so I didn't see you spray nitro, or you'd be wearing a patch I didn't know about, and you'd be coughing, and I honestly didn't know what that meant, but you just kept on going as if you were perfectly okay. Which you were not. And you were
happy
.”

“Well, I
am
happy,” said Ajax. “Also fabulous at hiding illness. Years ago, when I came out, other people were busy hiding that they were queer, and I was perfectly up-front about it, but that I was a heart crip, no way, that was my deep, dark secret.”

“Weird girl,” said Logan softly, stroking her brow.

Ajax looked at the tub, felt squeamish and faint. “Well, at least we know I have a lot of blood.”

The buzzer went. “That's the ambulance.”

“Your mom is going to give you such a lecture,” said Ajax.

Ajax was pre-triaged in the ambulance and admitted. Her left arm wasn't getting circulation, so the nurses checked for skin necrosis and gangrene, rolling her over in the cot every five minutes.

“All this from a little rat poison?” said Logan. “My little rodent.”

Ajax laughed.

Logan kissed Ajax's cheek. There was dried blood caked in her hair, crusting her eyes and the corners of her nose and mouth.

Ajax surrendered her phone with the kids' numbers again. “This time, I don't think there's any choice. You gotta call.”

“Have they said when I can take you out of here?”

“CICU, baby. Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. I'm admitted. It'll be, you know, days. Maybe you had better call Joe, too. Joe will be wondering what happened to us. I told her we'd bring lunch by today.”

“Honey. Honey, I can't stand this.”

“Can you grab me another blanket? There should be an oven somewhere for heated ones. And if you could bring me decaf and edible food, I'd really appreciate it. Yogurt and fruit in the mornings?”

“Hon, if your kids are flying in anyhow—”

“I don't think they need to
fly in
for this.” But Ajax thought,
Twenty-percent fatality rate
. And then,
They do.

“I'll fly them in and as long as they're here, let's get married during Pride. Why not get married at the Dyke Parade?”

Ajax burst out laughing—because she'd done exactly that at a long-ago Toronto Dyke March to the ex who hurt her. This coming Sunday would have been their anniversary. The laughing started her nose bleed anew; she was laughing and snorting when a nurse rushed in with ice and a vitamin K boost and made Logan leave.

Logan turned at the curtain. “What a complete moron your ex was, I just have to say.”

“Out,” said the nurse and held the compress to Ajax's face.

Barrelling toward catastrophe. Doctors, nurses, techs, janitors swishing filthy mops, doctors again, shift changes, staff turn-over. IVs, MRIs, CTs, bloodwork, bruises, spelling out the jargon for Logan: IV = intravenous line. MRI = magnetic resonance imaging. CT = computed tomography, multiple combined X-ray images. Fear = fear.

Backrubs, neck rubs, right hand rubs. Reading Audre Lorde and Marilyn Hacker. Slumping through bad TV. Waiting, waiting. Visitors, a thin stream; Joe with Scout and updates every day; Logan's mother Ruth, grudgingly, and none too friendly; Ajax's old high school friend, Denise. Calls and texts from Bahamian relatives and friends, Vancouver relatives and friends. Simone and Vivi, her daughters, calling day and night. Waiting for something to happen, the gangrene to spread, the doctor to order debriding, to say it was time to operate and restore blood flow.
Her hand turning red and black. Learning what dry gangrene was and how there was every likelihood that she had contracted it—a ten-percent chance of their diagnosis being wrong. Being glad it wasn't wet gangrene or gas gangrene. Watching a nurse draw a black magic marker line across Ajax's palm to see if it spread or declined past the border. Thinking it was spreading. Thinking it was abating. Thinking it was spreading again. Talking to everyone Ajax knew from BC on the telephone. Hogging the computer when Logan brought it in. Worried about herself; worried about how haggard Logan was looking. Neither was getting enough sleep, enough good food. Ajax was probably drinking too much coffee and definitely not getting adequately clean each day. She was fretting too much and worrying about hospital-acquired infections. The ward around her rattled with efficiency. This, at least, was good news. The sicker one got, as she knew, the quieter things were.

Logan said, “I say your name everywhere I go. ‘Ajax, Ajax, Ajax.' I get pretty convinced I can cure you by the sheer force of thinking you well.”

Smells of bleach, of antiseptic soap, urine, shit, blood, perfume, body odour. Things undefinable. Magazines chewed up with age, water glasses with bendy straws, pull-up taupe trays, bed bars, call buttons, heart monitor stickers that itched, blood pressure cuffs that squeezed too hard, IVs that stung at the puncture site and up the vein. Hospital-green walls. Fluorescent lighting. Noise and never a second's privacy.

Falling more helplessly in love.

“You know when I first realized that I was going to marry you?” Logan grinned. “Remember? I was drunk, stumbling home from Veronica's Grill. I was on the phone to you, and I said,
I'm gonna marry you.
And you said,
No you fucking aren't. I wouldn't fucking say yes even if you asked me
.”

Ajax laughed, asked Logan to raise the head of the bed.

“I knew then. Because you were mouthy; you talked back.”

“Ha! Well, shit, I'm still talking back.”

Logan sighed, sank on to the edge of the bed. “Thank god you are still talking back.”